Jumbo-Visma's communications manager Ard Bierens is leaving the team to join traditional Dutch football team PSV Eindhoven

Jumbo-Visma's communications manager Ard Bierens is leaving after seven successful years with the Dutch team. The Dutchman will become Communications & Press Affairs Manager at the PSV Eindhoven football club from December 1, he announced via LinkedIn.

Bierens announces his switch with a nice personal story. "On May 24 this year, friend/colleague Tijs Kuijpers and I drove along the Adriatic coast on our way to the finish of the 17th stage of the Giro d'Italia. In the region where I lived with great pleasure for eight years, different sentiments competed for priority. Would it be possible to win the Giro d'Italia this year after the Tour and the Vuelta three times? For me as a Giro adept, that would be the crowning achievement of seven wonderful seasons with Team Jumbo-Visma."

"As the arrival point of Caorle approached, Tijs and I followed the PSV press conference on a mobile phone, in which the sudden departure of club icon Ruud van Nistelrooy was explained. Our pink dream came true three days later with an eruption of emotions. But the way our club was in the news, again, hurt."

"On May 24, a fantasy arose that in the following months increasingly resulted in a realistic ambition: one day to exchange the best cycling team in the world for the most beautiful football club in the Netherlands. That day has almost come. On November 30, my professional time in cycling will come to an end, which started in 1998 at De Telegraaf and in which I worked as a press officer at Vacansoleil-DCM, Trek Factory Racing and Team Jumbo-Visma since 2011."